Busiest blog on the net

Here is a link to an Israelis woman's blog. She was featured on Canada AM earlier this week and according to stats cited by the show, her blog is the most read on the topic of the crisis in the Middle East. Quite interesting to see, read, and get a feel for what is actually going on on the other side of the world - not just filtering what the media tells us.

http://ontheface.blogware.com/

The Pop-Culture Closure

I was wondering, amidst all the reality shows; what to wear, what not to wear, who says the darnedest things, how someone miraculously survived sliding off a roof while they were shovelling it, how babies can shoot peas out of their noses and win $10,000 for doing it, how people can invent things that are too ridiculous to entertain or mention, how we can watch the sweetest proposals caught on tape, do we gain closure on events that affected us all?

During the thirty eight minutes of previews to "The Devil Wears Prada" was the one preview that surely stopped everyones breath, even for just a moment. World Trade Center, the movie. In the hours it seemed to have passed in mere seconds, we were all brought back to that day. Are we ready to relive it? Are we prepared to submerse ourselves into the images we had nightmares about?

After all great events there is inevitably some director that thinks it's a good time to document all the facts... whether it's Baby Erica's story, the first organ transplant, Apollo 13, the Sago mine disaster, the Holocaust, 9/11. When do we know we're ready? And if we are, do we get closure?

Youth is wasted on most of the young, not all of them.

Sunday I was in a pastry shop picking out assorted decadent desserts to bring to my brothers for dinner and this tiny elderly woman walked up next to me. Hunched over, the poor woman must have had osteoporosis, starts to point and select her own decadent desserts to a young girl who strained to hear her.

"What?" the young one said when she missed The Elderly Lady point and describe the millefeuille. I wanted to smack her. The urge to correct her and make her apologize was boiling up in me, but instead, I watched how The Elderly Lady reacted. She did nothing. Her face did not flinch as surely my mothers would have had I said that in my youth... her face and her backhand, I can assure you. But no. Nothing.

Apparently rudeness is easily forgiven and painted over like the terracotta-gone-wrong colour in my living room. It's never truly covered though. It's a sound, a message that can never be taken back. This young thing now knows "what" is an appropriate thing to say when you did not hear something. How dreadful.

Sitting in a Tim Hortons tonight I witnessed something incredible. A woman, who was intellectually handicapped, sat at a table across from me and watched as I read, and drank my coffee. I gave her a smile. When she got up to visit the restroom I noticed her again because she was carrying soo many bags I couldn't imagine what she would be traveling with at 9:30 at night. While she was in the restroom, my friend showed up, and I never saw her leave - not that I paid much attention, after all, my friend was there.

About an hour had passed, and being a Tims, at least a dozen women must have gone in and out of the washroom. All uneventful. It seems nobody noticed the legs of the woman strewn across the floor and feet sticking out from underneath the door, until one young girl called it to the attention of the employees on duty. Not one of them did anything... except the young girl who found her.

After some investigating, her and her friends found out the mystery woman's name, her address, and they all pitched in money for a taxi to make sure she got to her foster home safely. No one wanted to let her venture alone on the bus with it being after 11:00pm now. I saw them all walk her out to the waiting car and an instant later were gone too.

There's more to youth than the "what's." That is what keeps my faith that there still are really good people in the world, some of them much younger than I, who would rather help someone than walk away.

Letting go...

So here's a lesson I haven't learned yet. I read this email once that went around to everyone and their auntie boasting the ultimate meanings of "letting go." It told me how it doesn't mean surrender, arrogance, lack of faith, indifference, distrust of yourself or others... and a whack of other crap I can't type (since I don't remember it). Essentially, it meant you can still love, like, or care for someone and not need to carry the heavy parts with you. I suppose now I really need permission to let go.

Permission. Asking permission to me, from me, to release the feelings of hurt. Choosing to believe that what is happening really isn't about me. (Funny, not everything is about me. Shocking.)

As of today, I will choose to release, I will opt for sanity and hopefully come out the other side with it no longer choosing me. Serenity.

See title... I am still learning.

THINK

The next time you open your mouth, ask yourself this - is what I am about to say one of the following things?

T is for thoughtful
H is for honest
I is for intelligent
N is for necessary
K is for kind

...if not, do what your mama told ya and keep it to yourself.

Starting over sans hot pink sheets...

Someone once told me that there is a certain feel-good feeling about a single girl getting into hot pink sheets at night. Mine are baby yellow, well worn-in, soft and cuddly from thousands of nights curled up with me.

Living alone is one thing, living alone is another. Both are gifts I have given myself - the most recent one has been too long in coming. So here I sit in a funny ponytail, writing the first, and probably shortest post, knowing I'll be sitting on my balcony later, reading Marian Keyes, sipping tea, and reveling in the fact that getting into yellow sheets, with no one else but me, is exactly where I am meant to be.